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A Technology Guide to User Empowerment

Technology lies at the heart of user empowerment. Here’s an overview of what an IT shop needs to put empowerment to work.

The principles underlying user empowerment—user engagement and free markets—can seem abstract and philosophical. But the challenges for the IT shop in integrating “almost enterprise” solutions with core systems are concrete and technical. Fortunately, the required tools and practices already exist. CIOs should focus on acquiring these capabilities and applying them effectively.

Composite application frameworks. These frameworks are designed for orchestrating long-running, end-to-end business processes over a series of steps and discrete systems. They can be used for simplistic as well as complex business processes, and for integrating processes from multiple back-end systems. Tools allow a given transaction to be assembled from public and private cloud services, on-premise enterprise systems and data, or manual tasks—by employees, business partners, and even customers. Often coupled with business rules engines and messaging layers, these advanced platforms are designed for dynamic routing and composition of services. Steps and services are dictated by data in the workload, or by external factors such as supply chain status, traffic updates, and customer service interactions.

Agile development. To achieve faster development times, IT departments apply “agile” approaches to managing software projects and developing products and applications. Adding agile approaches such as “scrum” to a software development lifecycle can entail making significant changes. Release management, configuration management, portfolio tracking, project management, and testing standards are likely based on traditional “waterfall” mentalities—and hard-wired into systems and infrastructure.

Next-generation development languages. A number of no- or low-code development approaches—including Ruby on Rails, Python, Force.com, and Google’s Enterprise App Engine—are gaining traction. Enterprise standards like J2EE, .NET, and COBOL will not be completely replaced, but will likely be coupled with languages, such as HTML5 and Adobe Air to promote experimentation at “the edge” and rapid cycles from concept and prototype to finished product.

Wireframing and prototyping. Executing any vision for user empowerment requires rapidly iterating design concepts and creating representative prototypes. Standardization will help design teams achieve proficiency. On the other hand, attempting to select tools tailored to specific situations may only cause them to get “lost in the weeds.”

Integration. Back-end system integration usually presents a bottleneck to the rapid build-out of solutions. If user adoption takes off, solutions need to quickly transition from representative prototypes and stand-alone applications to fully integrated systems that interface with legacy systems and data. IT should build a service bus and integration framework capable of handling tiers of service levels—a spectrum of reliability, performance, transactional integrity, and security capabilities. User empowerment will likely entail introducing new integration patterns to support the required flexibility, based on SOA (service-oriented architecture) principles. In addition, IT may need to integrate cloud offerings with the core, as well as integrating the core with external services, such as social platforms.

Vendor, contract, and asset management. Standardized processes supported by specialized tools should be deployed to track and manage vendors, contracts, and associated assets. Asset tracking needs to move beyond physical devices and software licenses to become a services repository. This would allow tracking of cloud services, application and integration objects, mobile applications, on-premise solutions, and other IT resources, many of which may not be owned by central IT.

Harnessing user empowerment is not about enacting controls or punishing innovation. It is about reinventing IT as a compelling set of service-based capabilities that bring to bear consumer sensibilities and emerging technologies. Ultimately, it means guiding and accelerating the adoption of applications from the edge of the enterprise to its core.

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